Yes, it's another thread about Great Ork Gods. Those of you who haven't been following the earlier threads may wish to look in here.

I've put a second playtest release up at www.greatorkgods.co.uk, with a few new rules tweaks and polishs and a slew of corrections and clarifications. I'm hoping this will be the last release before the final version - time will tell.

There's been a few rules tweaks since the first release:

• I've added some optional rules for randomly generating Orks. If these prove popular, I will probably make these the standard rules and offer customised Orks as the option.
• The minimum hate is now two, rather than one.
• Rolls against one of your own God have changed. If you succeed, all of the other players now receive a point of Spite. The rule about you receiving Spite if the other players spend some has been removed. Hopefully this will help balance out the Gods a bit as well as slightly increasing the amount of Spite kicking around.
• Goblins have been changed. You now have a small band of dedicated followers, equal to your Oog less any goblins you've 'lost' (should've listened to Ralph the first time round) - the rules have been re-ordered to emphasise the sacrifical role of Goblins over the role of giving them orders.

Ok, things I'm looking for feedback on:

• The changes, what do you think? Especially from those who have seen, and played, the first playtest release.
• The clarity of the rules - have they improved from the first release? Do you understand them? Does the players handout give the same impression of the rules as the main rules do?
• Are the examples clear? Should there be more? Less?
• Does the order things are explained in make sense?

Cheers,

Jack.

(Edited to correct stupid typo - see below)

Hi Jack,

Lettin' you know that I'm planning a Great Ork Gods session or two in the very near future.

Get this: Tunnels & Trolls, Elfs, Fairy Meat, and The Great Ork Gods. That's what one of the groups I play in has been up to. We're all getting a little punchy ...

Best,
Ron

Jack, I'll be going through this version as soon as I have some time, I'm really excited to see this game hit the streets.

Initial query, however. I note you're using spite as the number of Goblins rather than Oog. Since Spite changes in the game, how does this effect the Goblins? Do new Gobs show up whenever your spite increases? Does the GM narrate nasty demises for your Gobs whenever spite decreases? Or is it based on total Spite ever earned without regards to whether it was spent or not (Total Spite ever earned - Total Goblins lost = size of goblin band).

The answer may be in the text, but I don't have time to get to it this morning.

Hi Ralph,

That was a typo - Doh! Should have been Oog.

Um, I think I'll edit the first post so it doesn't confuse others, just so no-one wonders what Ralph was talking about here's what I incorrectly wrote in the first post:

I wrote: Goblins have been changed. You now have a small band of dedicated followers, equal to your Spite less any you've 'lost' (should've listened to Ralph the first time round) - the rules have been re-ordered to emphasise the sacrifical role of Goblins over the role of giving them orders.

Ron wrote: Get this: Tunnels & Trolls, Elfs, Fairy Meat, and The Great Ork Gods. That's what one of the groups I play in has been up to. We're all getting a little punchy ...

Hi Ralph,

That was a typo - Doh! Should have been Oog.

Valamir wrote:
I look forward to hearing some playtest reports on how the new Goblin system works. In my group with Seth and Crystal we just played Inspectres, as sort of a brush-the-dust-off game to get us back into the roleplaying swing. Perhaps we can do a session of GoG too.

I recently got a chance to play in, rather than run GOG and, in the process give the new rules a fairly sound test.

Mostly pleased - but I found the random Ork generation (which looked good on paper) seemed to produce fairly bland Orks in practice. I'm thinking therfore of making it so you just roll a d5 for each hate - this will allow 1's again but I think since they will be randomly placed, it won't have the min/max problem they had before.

I'm also a little concerned that the new Spite rules for using your own god might produce an over-abundance of Spite in games with more players (we only had three) - has anyone played with the new rules with four or five players?